On a balancing note, I'm astonished that a multi-track tunnel across the 6000 tiles of ocean is in any way viable. I know we were worried about my (substantially) shorter tunnels and I was considering ferries instead for at least the biggest gap. I'm not sure it's right that entire intercity rail networks can be built underground (even the London Underground is mostly above ground, in spite of the name).

It cost about 100 million to build that double track system under the ocean from end to end, though I seem to be able to recover the cost of that in just a single year's profits now that it is running full bore. This is certainly assisted by the 12 million residents we now have on the map, which creates a massive passenger demand.

The major benefit of such a system is that there are no hills and corners around terrain to contend with - just nice long straight runs, allowing trains to reach their maximum speed and maintain it. It was more of a test than anything, I hardly expected to be making 250 million per year!!

I've only served the bottom part of the map - I'd suggest doing the same thing on the northern end instead of your above ground route. Going in and out of the sea tunnels will make your service extremely slow and completely incapable of handling any decent amount of demand. If you opt for rail-ship interconnections, the number of transfers required will significantly limit your potential load.

The easiest thing to implement regarding deep sea tunnels is to increase cost with the deeper it has to go: making tunnel at -13 should be very expensive to build and maintain. That said, the technology to build the channel tunnel has existed for a very long time, it was only until recently that they actually built it... but less for technological reasons and more for political ones.

It cost about 100 million to build that double track system under the ocean from end to end, though I seem to be able to recover the cost of that in just a single year's profits now that it is running full bore. This is certainly assisted by the 12 million residents we now have on the map, which creates a massive passenger demand.

The major benefit of such a system is that there are no hills and corners around terrain to contend with - just nice long straight runs, allowing trains to reach their maximum speed and maintain it. It was more of a test than anything, I hardly expected to be making 250 million per year!!

I've only served the bottom part of the map - I'd suggest doing the same thing on the northern end instead of your above ground route. Going in and out of the sea tunnels will make your service extremely slow and completely incapable of handling any decent amount of demand. If you opt for rail-ship interconnections, the number of transfers required will significantly limit your potential load.

The easiest thing to implement regarding deep sea tunnels is to increase cost with the deeper it has to go: making tunnel at -13 should be very expensive to build and maintain. That said, the technology to build the channel tunnel has existed for a very long time, it was only until recently that they actually built it... but less for technological reasons and more for political ones.

It's not like "small" companies like his and mine can afford it.. 100million!Even if we have the money to just about build it, anything wrong will then be "back to the drawing board"...

I like your push style trains by the way... (So passengers don't have to breath smoke)

The average trip time is just about 26 in game minutes, a lot shorter than i would have expected

It's important to note that the eastern island's cities are much larger on average and have a higher urban density than the western island. This is due to my early decision to constrain the cities with canals to make them denser, also to serve pax/mail early on to encourage growth. This allows me to have heavy pax/mail demand on the underground lines. A lot of the western island cities (more on the south half) are considerably smaller and won't generate enough demand to pay for an expensive underground system.

It's important to note that the eastern island's cities are much larger on average and have a higher urban density than the western island. This is due to my early decision to constrain the cities with canals to make them denser, also to serve pax/mail early on to encourage growth.

I hope that strategy will be nixed in future games by a rebalancing of the canal costs, as it's not exactly very realistic. I think the cities need a more active bridge-building code to prevent this sort of thing too. City growth should be organic unless we are going to presume a fairly prescriptive regime (rare historically) or city walls (but military installations in simutrans have been vetoed already I think).

It's not like "small" companies like his and mine can afford it.. 100million!Even if we have the money to just about build it, anything wrong will then be "back to the drawing board"...

I also think it somewhat absurd to be able to accumulate that much capital from an undeveloped economy (let alone to get interest on it so that it grows simply because it exists). There simply isn't enough wealth creation going on for one company to have such a vast pool of liquid wealth sitting there. Interest on savings should be related to demand by others for borrowing.

I'm considering walking away from this server game because the 3/4 big companies are just too dominant in every sector, it is no longer interesting or realistic. The fact that freight "merry go rounds" are being used demonstrates that these companies aren't balancing the industry supply and demand, they are merely hoovering up everything and hoping it sorts itself out on average.

I have discovered that combining industrial/freight operations in to one big aggregate has provided a much better supply/balance curve than matching individual industries together as I did previous. Not only is it much easier to manage logistically, but it spreads supply and demand out much nicer and everything is producing more consistently. We are also crossing freight over between players much more frequently as well which is benefiting both players and industries.

One thing which is irreconcilable is that supply and demand isn't matched in the game. For the most part there is far much supply than demand, especially at the retail end, so most supply industries are running at only a fraction of their potential output. This is mostly a pakset balancing concern.

As for realism, unless we're deciding to make it a "role play" type game where we limit ourselves to the knowledge of the time present, we are gifted by the knowledge of foresight and can anticipate future transportational needs -- much like your trans-ocean railway right-of-way built with roads and canals in the late 1700's I have left that section that you service largely unaddressed, but if you aren't intending to connect it together, another player should take the initiative and jump in there. I know I'd like to build another cross rail line through the northern bay section.

I have left that section that you service largely unaddressed, but if you aren't intending to connect it together, another player should take the initiative and jump in there. I know I'd like to build another cross rail line through the northern bay section.

But will there be any demand, if players are operating optimum straight-line routes beneath the sea? They will inevitably out-perform any route which follows the terrain.

Absolutely true. Might be better to drop your entire line under the ocean. I know A-Train is considering plowing one across the southern side of the map. Only a matter of time before another one comes across the north.

Absolutely true. Might be better to drop your entire line under the ocean. I know A-Train is considering plowing one across the southern side of the map. Only a matter of time before another one comes across the north.

Can't afford it. An east west route by land& sea is 'only' £4.5M. These are engineering works demanding a whole different level of capital, man-on-the-moon (game-breaking?) levels of funding.

Can't afford it. An east west route by land& sea is 'only' £4.5M. These are engineering works demanding a whole different level of capital, man-on-the-moon (game-breaking?) levels of funding.

It depends on whether you take the risk of partnering our companies up to build one, like AEO suggested.I might get off-line and investigate the possibilities of that.

The plan was for each of us to build a direction, but we do need to act quicklyas both our companies are literally "dying"...

I think the next game should eliminate some of these maniac bridges and tunnel issues we have in this game, so be hold.But quitting might not be the best choice as you can look at it the other way,this is an interesting challenge for you to rescue a dying company and compete with ones that are 100 times larger.You might find it satisfying after all.

I've long thought maintenance and construction costs for tunnels and bridges should be exponential with length.The only other fix I can think of would be to introduce construction time into the game. If your transcontinental tunnel takes 60 years to build...

I also think that if we could control the price it will make things much more easier.We can limit over-crowding as it will be "too expensive" for some people which in turns makes the railway more profitable.

A full track laying from the very east end to the very west end on the north will cost about 36,000,000 simuro and the maintenance costs for the tracks alone is around 800,000 simuro per month.I am now quite tempting to do this since I discovered I can afford it (I even have 2 years gap to get the cash rolled in before bankrupcy) But AP still have his planned IR so I will not do it for the moment.

I also think an ASwr Partnership Programme is doable. And I think AP you don't need to see this like the polish see anschluss..What I see is more benefits for both of us in it.

Yeah, I made the same realization myself when looking at the future advances of ships coming. Rail will outstrip any ship-based transport from here on in. The luxury coast in 1878, 39km/h with 2000 passengers looked promising, but I am doubting whether it will be much use by then.

In 1848 the 120 km/h tunnels appear... which will be another 100+ million to upgrade.

Exponential tunnel/bridge costs would be interesting. The massive elevated rail and bridge systems are nearly as outrageous as the tunnel systems.

I've noticed that with the server-side executable change today that it takes quite a bit longer for the clock to start running after a connection has been established. It used to take about 5-10 seconds between file download/connection and being able to play in game, now it's closer to 30-60 seconds.

Server restarted with new version 11.30. This reverts to a version that I have compiled myself, albeit with the same settings as TurfIt used to see whether this makes any difference to the desync problems. Please let me know how you all get on.

EDIT Third time's the charm, I guess... it sailed through the time slot and didn't crash this time. No clue why it crashed on server end the first two times. Not sure if server logs will have any information.

I fast forwarded local copy and it crashed twice at start of 1838, so something interesting is occuring.

EDIT And now it moved through 0:00 Jan 1838 without a problem. Go figure!

Hmm - the crashes are rather bizarre (and unfortunate, since, on restarting, the server logs are ovewritten). A-Train has reported that he cannot stay connected longer than 30 seconds, which is also rather odd. Thank you for keeping me informed.